Drawing is remembering, a deposition, a perspective, one's vision of an object, an image that starts from bias and moves toward accessibility, redrawn and over-written, some parts corrected, others fetishized and still others obliterated or buffed-out leaving only traces behind. The panel mounted drawings in this exhibition employ figures and motifs of cityscapes, gesturally evoking Los Angeles while avoiding iconic identity. This lack of specificity, while still familiar, allows the imagery to exist in a tense state between the particular and the general, a collective unconscious.

Lines create the figures, but the lines are mischievous and misleading and manifold, simultaneously defining volume and filling space, delineating both objects and actions and testing the expressive elasticity of the graphic mark–an excessive exuberance to say the least. Larger scale geometries of flattened color help order the compositions. These elements occupy a shifting middle ground, foregrounding and backgrounding the linear elements. The under painting (a technique not traditionally associated with drawing) refuses to stay in the background and through procedures like erasure float back toward the surface and challenge the reading of the works as drawings and place them on the spectrum of painting.

Hauser Wirth & Schimmel is pleased to present a comprehensive exhibition of expressive black walnut sculptures from the White Snow series by Paul McCarthy, one of America’s most challenging and influential artists. Never before exhibited in Los Angeles, these exuberant works violate expectations of the beloved German folktale ‘Snow White.’ McCarthy’s distorted abstractions of Dopey, the Prince, even Snow White herself, will inhabit the North A & B, and East Galleries, as well as the Courtyard. This show follows McCarthy’s Raw Spinoffs Continuations exhibition at Hauser & Wirth New York in 2016.

Honor Fraser Gallery is pleased to present a survey of paintings by Morris Louis. The exhibition will be on view from June 23 through August 19, 2017.

“It could be argued that Louis's synthesis of the separable elements of painting is the most complete and complex to date; and that the veils announce a new phase in the history of art.”
- Barbara Rose, “Quality in Louis,” Artforum, Oct. 1971

Before his untimely death at the age of 50 in 1962, Morris Louis painted more than 650 canvases. Working on the floor in his small suburban dining room studio, Louis developed his particular style of staining unprimed canvas with Magna acrylic by pouring the liquid pigment onto the canvas and directing it to run across, down, and around the canvas. Art historian and critic Barbara Rose acknowledged Louis's importance in the history of painting by pointing to his pivotal series of “veils,” so called due to the curtain-like washes of gossamer color Louis laid onto the canvases. Along with his veils, Louis's unfurled and stripe series mark crucial moments in his oeuvre, in the evolution of Color Field painting, and in American painting more broadly.

Drawing upon the twin influences of Jackson Pollock's unprecedented athleticism and all-over composition and Helen Frankenthaler's groundbreaking use of pigment to stain the canvas in her 1952 painting Mountains and Sea, Louis was driven to find pathways that would lead to new ways to paint. While Pollock put distance between his brush and the canvas by dripping the paint from the end of his brushes and Frankenthaler combined direct staining with traditional paint application, Louis eradicated tools from his process altogether, pouring his pigment onto unprimed canvas then using gravity to direct the paint over the canvas as it absorbed into the warp and weft of the fabric.

Though Louis pursued a pure abstraction unhindered by associations to anything beyond the picture, the veils recall formations of land affected by the movement of water: rivulets and channels of running water, erosion, fluvial planes. The unfurled and stripe series possess a boldness and immediacy that achieves full non-representation. This exhibition will look at the various periods of Louis's short but extraordinary career with paintings that have been largely unseen on the west coast.

Kayne Griffin Corcoran is pleased to collaborate with The Estate of Jiro Takamatsu on the gallery’s second annual commemorative presentation of Jiro Takamatsu’s work. The exhibition will feature photographs documenting actions and events staged by Hi-Red Center, the experimental art collective officially co-founded by Takamatsu in Tokyo in 1963.

Previously exhibited in Hi-Red Center: Documents of Direct Action at the Nagoya City Art Museum and Shoto Museum of Art, Tokyo, the pieces will be shown in Los Angeles for the first time. A concurrent exhibition, Hi-Red Center – through photographs and works continues at Yumiko Chiba Associates, Tokyo, through August 5.

Hi-Red Center sought to take art beyond the confines of traditional commercial and institutional settings, collapsing the boundaries between art and life. With co-founders Genpei Akasegawa and Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Takamatsu primarily used the group as a vehicle through which to stage guerrilla-style Happenings in vibrant gestures of anti-art (or “han-geijutsu”), often in public places ranging from railway stations and train-car interiors to high-rise rooftops and the streets of Ginza.

Executed during a period of rapid development in Japan, Hi-Red Center’s actions and events should be seen both in tandem with those of the international Fluxus movement and as a natural development from the Japanese Gutai group’s earlier avant-garde manifestos. Whether rolling a tire across a busy sidewalk or dropping objects from a penthouse onto the concrete below, Takamatsu and his collaborators (who included more than just Akasegawa and Nakanishi) conceived the group’s activities to challenge their validity as artworks—and, through this lens, to question traditional systems and standards of artistic practice.

Also on view with the photographs will be Atorie wo tazunete: Jiro Takamatsu (“Visiting an Artist's Studio: Jiro Takamatsu”), a documentary originally broadcast on TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System) Television in 1974. This filmed interview provides a rare look into Takamatsu’s practice a decade after Hi-Red Center’s official end, allowing viewers further insight into how the collective helped shape his thinking and the works that followed.

The opening reception will double as the launch event for the new catalogue Jiro Takamatsu, published by Inventory Press. With essays by Jordan Carter, Hiroyuki Nakanishi, and Takamatsu himself, the book features works recently exhibited at Kayne Griffin Corcoran—including the seminal Rusty Ground (1977), shown in North America for the first time in winter 2016—as well as archival photographs from the artist’s studio, historical process images, and stills from Atorie wo tazunete: Jiro Takamatsu. Copiously illustrated, the catalogue offers a timely re-evaluation of Takamatsu’s practice following a resurgence of appreciation for the postwar Japanese avant-garde.

The career of Jiro Takamatsu (1936–1998) spanned over 40 years, during which time his considerable influence as an artist, theorist, and teacher extended across postwar Japanese culture. He represented Japan at the 34th Venice Biennale (Carlo Cardazzo Price, 1968), as well as exhibited at the Paris Biennial (1969), São Paulo Biennial (1973), and Documenta 6, Kassel (1977). He was recently the subject of two major retrospectives in Japan, staged in concert with one another at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2014) and the National Museum of Modern Art, Osaka (2015). Jiro Takamatsu: The Temperature of Sculpture will be on view at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, England, from July 13 to October 22.

For press inquiries please email press@kaynegriffincorcoran.com.

John Mason Sculpture 1958-1964

Jul 15 - Aug 26, 2017

Kayne Griffin Corcoran is pleased to present our first exhibition with Los Angeles-based ceramicist John Mason.

Kohn Gallery presents Dennis Hopper: The Lost Album, a reenvisioning of Hopper’s first photography show in 1970. Curators, Claudia Bohn-Spector and Sam Mellon of MICRONAUT, have thematically re-envisioned the exhibition with a fresh take on Hopper’s Fort Worth show, presenting surviving prints in a new, critical context for his work. On view are photographs including some of Hopper’s most iconic work, arranged in evocative narrative groupings that encapsulate his unique and conceptual photographic practice.

Lora Schlesinger Gallery is proud to present Some Things Never Change, Delfin Finley’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition opens with an artist’s reception, Saturday, July 22, from 5 – 7 pm and is on view through August 26, 2017.

Delfin Finley is a figurative painter passionate about creating a body of work that reflects the racism that permeates our society. The title of the exhibition Some Things Never Change, references the events that people of color have encountered, both in the past, and in present day. His portraits reverently depict individuals, with the acknowledgment that they are often the targets of violence in a society that shows extreme bias against them. Despite their individual experiences, they are linked by instances in their lives in which they felt they were not in control of their present or their future. In the painting It’s Only A Matter of Time, a portrait of the artist’s father, the subject represents all men of color. Pensively holding a shovel in his hand, the figure alludes to the danger that black men face on a daily basis. The shovel can be used to prepare a grave, or can be raised in defiance; a decision that exists subconsciously with every action and subtle movement that people of color make. Delfin’s masterful depiction and the veneration of his subjects hopes to capture the beauty within them, and to inspire a hope for change so that the strengths and talents of people of color can have the freedom to flourish and grow.

Delfin Finley was born in Los Angeles, California. He is actively pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. He has exhibited in numerous exhibitions nationally including exhibitions in Colorado, Oregon and Iowa. In 2016 he was published on the cover of Studio Visit Magazine, and included in the City of Los Angeles African American Heritage Month Calendar & Cultural Guide.

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce L.A. Paintings, an exhibition of new paintings by Düsseldorf-based artist Erik Olson, to be presented from July 15 through August 19, 2017. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, July 15th, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.

L.A. Paintings represents Erik Olson’s ongoing project with portraiture and is the culmination of several years of exploration and experimentation in his Düsseldorf studio and a period of intense production in Los Angeles. Portraying friends and colleagues as well as people he has an interest in, these bold, expressive paintings present the genre of portraiture as fluid as identity itself, offering a range of possibilities that lead us back to a central question: how do we define the individual in this present moment? In response, Olson posits these questions:

“Is it skin color? Is it gender or sexual orientation? Is it the place a person lives or where they are born? Is it religion or the ethnic group we belong to? Is it a Facebook profile or an Instagram post that defines us? Can you understand the human psyche through new innovations in neuroscience? The paintings answer none of these questions, yet, I am trying to present in a concrete way what I see as some of the most pressing questions of our time—how do we define the individual and how will this shape our sense of identity over time?

Olson’s paintings range from objective, observation-based representations to half cropped or framed portraits to more abstract and obscured geometric formations. While all of the work is within the frame of a ‘bust’ or traditional head and shoulders presentation, each painting proceeds in dramatically different directions, highlighting the very malleable idea of identity. Color is both specific and vague. Likewise, brushstrokes both define observations and fall off into process-based mark-making. The work oscillates between portraying the individual in an analytic sense as well as taking on a more intuitive approach, beyond knowledge.

Erik Olson (born 1982, Calgary, Alberta, Canada) has lived a nomadic life, having been raised in Calgary, Boston, and Nairobi as a child. He graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver in 2007. In 2014 and 2015, he attended the critically acclaimed Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as a guest student of Peter Doig. Olson has been the subject of solo exhibitions in major cities across Canada and internationally in Europe and the United States. His work has been featured in Juxtapoz, ELLE Canada, The London Free Press, London Yodeller, and The Telegraph, among others. He currently lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.